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Getting To Know Men's Soccer's Matt Habrowski

Sept. 26, 2016

By Jennifer Prosser ’18

Senior defender Matt Habrowski is one of three University of Notre Dame men’s soccer captains this year. Currently he is a mechanical engineering major, but he is planning on taking a fifth year in the ACMS Masters in Predictive Analytics program next fall.

Q. What’s the best thing about your hometown?
A. For sure Clark’s Ice Cream. Fantastic little hometown ice cream shop in Berkley, Michigan. I’ll probably get laughed at but my favorite flavor is blue moon. It’s kind of a sweet, fruity vanilla flavor but I like it. That, or mint chocolate chip. When I go to Kilwin’s that’s all I get.

Q. Who was your favorite athlete growing up?
A. I don’t know if I had one. Maybe Brandon Inge from the Detroit Tigers. Third baseman bounced around the Tigers for a while. My friends and I loved him for some reason, but he was sweet.

Q. Are you a big fan of a lot of Detroit teams?
A. Oh yeah. It’s been hard being a Lions fan, I will say I have not followed Lions football too often. I am a big Red Wings and Tigers fan, though. Pistons are on the comeback too. They were sweet in the early 2000’s with Chauncey [Billups], Rip [Hamilton], Rasheed [Wallace], and Ben [Wallace].

Q. If you could kick around with any other Notre Dame athlete, past or present, who would it be?
A. Probably Matt Besler. He’s a former soccer player and I kind of look up to him as a role model. He came through and plays left back for the national team now, so that’d be pretty cool. I played with his brother Nick so if I could make that happen that’d be cool.

Q. What’s something about you that people would be surprised to know?
A. I spend a lot of time doing crossword puzzles. It’s kind of weird, my roommates laugh at me and call it my form of video games. They’ll be playing FIFA or something and I’ll be on my computer on the couch next to them doing a crossword puzzle. It’s kind of goofy but I love it. USA Today is a favorite tab on my computer.

Q. What’s the coolest place you’ve ever been?
A. We took a team trip to Zimbabwe for three weeks, it was fantastic. We played soccer, did a little service, and did some tourist stuff too. We went to Victoria Falls, did a safari, visited the Great Zimbabwe ruins, it was incredible. It was so much fun, definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Q. What’s your favorite off-the-field team memory?
A. Definitely Zimbabwe, one night we had a bus ride back to our huts from dinner just the kids while the coaches stayed at dinner. We had the wildest dance party. Akon was playing. It took out a lot of our frustration from the first 10 days of the trip, but we all look back on it as one of the best memories here.

Q. What’s one thing you couldn’t live without?
A. Peanut butter sandwiches. One hundred percent. I make two or three a day. Grape Smuckers, the natural jelly, and low-sodium Jiff peanut butter – it’s the brown cap one.

Q. What Disney princess are you most like?
A. I love the movie Tangled, we watched that in my room a couple times sophomore year. Other than that, maybe Elsa. I liked Frozen a lot, you can’t not sing along to those songs. But I like Tangled a lot, it’s a very underrated Disney movie, so whoever the princess in that is.

Q. What’s your go-to guilty pleasure?
A. Lately it’s been playing Yahtzee on my iPad. It’s gotten kind of weird too, I just play pass and play with myself so it should be two-player but I just play myself in Yahtzee. That’s kind of how I pass my time in study breaks. It’s a really weird thing to get into, I remember playing as a kid with my mom, but a few people can attest to it. I’m sorry this is going to be a weird interviewââ’¬¦

Q. What’s been different about your senior season?
A. I feel more relaxed right now. It hasn’t really set in yet that this is my last time playing with a lot of guys in my class, which I know will be tough at the end. So hopefully it ends really well for us. I’m definitely more focused on soccer now, as bad as that sounds and as much as Boss will hate to hear it. I need to get my sleep before the games so if I need to stop doing homework a little early then it just doesn’t get done sometimes. Like I said, definitely more relaxed and excited about coming back for a fifth year to finish out.

Q. Is there any advice in particular you try to pass down to your freshmen?
A. I’m a big attitude person and I think that reflects a lot in your character. So if you come in with a good attitude and are willing to put in the work everyday, things will pay off for you in the long run. Attitude and hard work are the two things that you can control, and that applies to everything really both on the field and off.

Q. In a movie of your life, who would play you?
A. I don’t know why Tom Hanks comes to mind, but I like him so I’ll say that. I also like older movies, I grew up watching a lot of war movies with my dad, so maybe someone like Henry Fonda.